Related Stories

One councillor believes a de facto party system has been created at City Hall, with some councillors who received campaign funding from developers in the last election backing the mayor in a pro-development agenda.

“We do have one party in council that’s quite recognizable and will have an impact on decisions that are made,” says Bill Glover, the representative for Sydenham ward.

“There’s an assumption that everybody runs as an independent, but they don’t. And so the way the resident reacts to council is based on a false premise.”

Glover submitted an op-ed piece to the Whig-Standard itemizing the amounts of money certain councillors received from developers in the 2010 election. Some of them now hold influential positions on the city planning committee and mayor’s task force on development. The column appears today on page 5.

“It’s not as though they’re selling Development Party memberships,” said Glover in an interview. “There’s a common philosophy.”

Two recent developments caused him to write about the situation.

First was the creation of a mayor’s task force that is looking at ways to streamline the development process in Kingston.

Second was a recent Whig-Standard article identifying a 7-6 voting pattern on a number of council motions.

Glover said the creation of the task force by Mayor Mark Gerretsen came as a surprise.

“None of the campaign literature which I saw from Mark talked about doing this sort of thing at all,” said Glover. “At least it was not a widely announced campaign commitment.”

Glover also recalled a developer at one task force meeting complaining about peer reviews of projects running out of control.

Very few reviews are ever demanded by the city, he said.

“That was the straw that broke the back. Some of the unsubstantiated nonsense coming forward at the mayor’s task force on development, such as peer reviews - when it first came up I wrote a letter to the task force saying, 'This is what it’s all about.' Somebody’s got to say, 'Half a second, what’s going on?'”

Glover said that while the Whig-Standard article assumed that councillors were elected as individuals, and voted as such, that this is not his view from the council table.

“This council seems very clearly to be working on a party line based on developer funding. That’s the commonality I found,” he said.

Glover believes campaigns to introduce citywide elections of councillors, instead of the current district electoral system, are yet another sign of a concerted political effort by the development community.

“That’s where their (campaign support) money really, really starts to have an impact,” he said.

Under the 2010 municipal election guidelines, council candidates were allowed to raise contributions to a maximum of $5,000 plus 85 cents per elector in their district.

Total expenses allowed ranged from about $10,000 to $13,000.

Mayoral candidates worked with a maximum donation of $7,500 plus 85 cents per elector in the city.

Gerretsen was allowed to spend $87,736. He took in $70,804 and spent a total of $71,478.

The maximum contribution to a single candidate was set at $750, while the maximum donation to the overall municipal election was capped at $5,000.

Glover said his campaign policy was to refuse money from unions and corporations and only accept from individuals.

He would like to see a similar policy adopted provincewide.

“Long-term, if there’s pressure on the province to change the election funding guidelines, that would be brilliant,” said Glover.